Tense Nervous House Music

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
House is just the most despised form of dance music isn't it? It's so easy to sneer cos it's the commercial backbone of the industry; just product. All the feeling is supposed to have been leached out of it. The ardkore continuum we all love represents a kind of divorce from house; certainly I don't detect a great love of the genre among Dissenssians. And why should you? It's all formulaic dross isn't it?

Well, no, and even when it's formulaic, boshing nonsense, house can still transport. Over the last month or so I've become obsessed with the idea of disco-derivative House being the ultimate pagan music. A while back I did a mix of fairly meditative Industrial music; my kind of House music springs from the same impulses. I've written more about how this aspect of house can be applied here.

I suspect House music's critical stock has never been lower. It therefore seems to me to be the best possible time to reappraise it. Hence this mix, titled Tense Nervous House Music. It's an antidote to turgid false-positive handbag while still being capable of slamming hard. Taking its inspiration from the darker end of "real disco" -- Tope and Brewster's Last Night a DJ Saved My Life was a big influence on this mix -- it attempts to redefine the term "funky house" in the best possible way.

Tense Nervous House Music: http://www.grievousangel.net/TenseNervousHouseMusic.mp3
Right click and save as please (option or control click on the Mac) rather than playing straight from the link if possible please. I haven't got time to ZIP it right now.

45 minutes 7 seconds
192K mp3
62Mb

Tracklisting:

David Byrne and Brian Eno: Jezebel Spirit
Norma Jean Bell / Moodymann: I’m the Baddest Bitch
KenLou: The Bounce
Jedi Knights: One for MAW
Deep Dish: Stranded (Danny Tenaglia’s GrooveJet Dubby Edit)
Deep Dish: Stranded (BT Vs DD: Grievous Angel’s 777 Edit)
Shaboom: Bessie (DJ Sneak mix)
Dajae: Day by Day (Grievous Angel Edit)
King Unique: Hell
Mongobonix: Mas Pito
Q Burns’ Abstract Message: Innocent (King Britt vocal mix)

Enjoy
 

dubplatestyle

Well-known member
heh, ironically paul, i think house is experiencing one of its hipster appreciation upticks right now

this looks great, btw
 

machine hugger

(())(())((+))(())(())
dubplatestyle said:
heh, ironically paul, i think house is experiencing one of its hipster appreciation upticks right now

this looks great, btw


I'm not sure about current House getting the nod but the roots revival is definitely here....Trax comps of Beltram, Farley....Salsoul comps....that Soul Jazz comp of Chicago 85-95....the stuff us old ravers caught the tail end of. Wrong?

btw check out Q-Burn if he DJ's out there. He's got some energy with him.
 
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Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Blackdown said:
wot no theo parrish? :)
Good point. I couldn't find any -- I just put all my vinyl other than a boxful of reggae comps in storage cos I'm moving house -- and I'm not sure I've got the good ones anyway.

What I really wanted to put in was Moodymann's I can't quit this feeling when it hits, which I don't have, and I couldn't buy it anywhere. Wish he'd reissue that LP. That's a simply devestating record.

And I really wanted to put in Chiapet's TickTock but couldn't find it in time. I've got a special set-piece in mind for that one though.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
machine hugger said:
I'm not sure about current House getting the nod but the roots revival is definitely here....Trax comps of Beltram, Farley....Salsoul comps....that Soul Jazz comp of Chicago 85-95....the stuff us old ravers caught the tail end of. Wrong?
No, that's quite right. And I'm particularly interested in seeing how the disco current shines through. But I personallly haven't detected much of a shift in the evaluation of mid-period house. I still see a lot of disdain there. In particular, I think there's a lot of antipathy to anything that's deemed cheezy -- anything that boshes, goes whoosh, or has a buzz to it. It's the same disdain for breakbeat or mid-period techno. Anything wth a bit of bollocks to it that isn't jungle or UKG tends to get looked down on.

Personally I like it banging and I don't mind if it's 4x4.
 

Chef Napalm

Lost in the Supermarket
House-aholics Anonymous

2stepfan said:
House is just the most despised form of dance music isn't it? It's so easy to sneer cos it's the commercial backbone of the industry; just product. All the feeling is supposed to have been leached out of it. The ardkore continuum we all love represents a kind of divorce from house; certainly I don't detect a great love of the genre among Dissenssians. And why should you? It's all formulaic dross isn't it?

Well, no, and even when it's formulaic, boshing nonsense, house can still transport.
Nobody’s noticed because no one here really knows me, not being from London and all, but my posts-per-day at dissensus dropped off dramatically three months ago. This is entirely due to my rediscovery of house. I was staying late at work and, in a moment of music-free desperation, surfed over to the Radio 1 site and pressed play. Annie Mac was on and she was playing a track with the squelchiest farting bassline I’ve heard in looooong time. Since then I’ve been obsessed with the fresh crop of acid-line groove-driven macro-house (TM blissblogger). I’ve been feeling and buying Soulwax, Tiga, Rex the Dog, Pryda label, Princess Him, Alexkid, and Tom Neville, just to name a few. Damned if it ain’t the worst kind of “commercial”, but it all sounds so fucking good to me, I just can’t help it.

My name is John and I am a house-aholic. Let the cries of derision commence.

2stepfan said:
Over the last month or so I've become obsessed with the idea of disco-derivative House being the ultimate pagan music.
Check out the new Discopolis on Alan Braxe’s Vulture Music label. Discolicious in a Kebekelktrik style.

dubplatestyle said:
heh, ironically paul, i think house is experiencing one of its hipster appreciation upticks right now
Jess Harvell: professional bubble-burster.
 

hint

party record with a siren
I find it hard to keep up with house - there's so much stuff released each and every week that it becomes a daunting task to check through everything and find the gems. it's always worth it, in my experience, yet it's not always possible to find the time, unfortunately.

I'm currently checking the whole new UK sound (I may be imagining it, but I think they're calling it "fidget house") - Jesse Rose / Solid Groove / Switch / Trevor Loveys / Loungin / Dubsided... one of those incestuous scenes where everyone releases records on each others' labels and records together under different names, it seems.

there was a period not so long ago where I was getting a much higher hit rate with my house searches - a sweet spot centred around Environ, Balihu, Joakim, Pepe Bradock, Dexter... those kinds of names. it's definitely dropped off now, but I know that there's always someone somewhere doing something interesting with 4x4. it's just a matter of finding the damn stuff.
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
I am loving this new electro-disco-house kind of stuff.

Check out the Electric Power mix from the following site, it's great:
http://www.808.be/audio/

House is so huge it's hard to make generalizations on it. You have your plastic disposable crap, the slick urban stuff and the soulful stuff and the zonked out, locked into a groove, bliss-music. I mean (a certain strain of) house is really the ultimate dance music where all the distractions have been removed and all the ass-shaking, body-moving, check-your-head at the door formulas are maximized. This is what that mid-period house is all about, innit? Technology may change, new genres may appear, whatever, we don't care, we just gonna take the best 3 seconds of a disco track, the ones that are the ultimate expression of THAT feeling and fatten it up a bit, maximize those elements and let it go for 10 minutes. Or am I missing something here?

So what do you mean by pagan?
 

bassnation

the abyss
2stepfan said:
Tracklisting:

David Byrne and Brian Eno: Jezebel Spirit
Norma Jean Bell / Moodymann: I’m the Baddest Bitch
KenLou: The Bounce
Jedi Knights: One for MAW
Deep Dish: Stranded (Danny Tenaglia’s GrooveJet Dubby Edit)
Deep Dish: Stranded (BT Vs DD: Grievous Angel’s 777 Edit)
Shaboom: Bessie (DJ Sneak mix)
Dajae: Day by Day (Grievous Angel Edit)
King Unique: Hell
Mongobonix: Mas Pito
Q Burns’ Abstract Message: Innocent (King Britt vocal mix)

Enjoy

nice stuff - great move to start the mix with a tune from my life in the bush of ghosts, an lp i've been caning in recent weeks (due in no small part to "rip it up and start again"). proto house, without which the dance scene would not be what it is.

also love that jedi knights track, trancendental is exactly the right word. those chords that get more and more spaced out totally fuck with your head in a club. also love those stranded remixes - nice to give these tunes the space to breath rather than cramming loads of tracks on to the mix, its more how they were intended to be played.

i've got the chiapet tick tock tune on vinyl - i've nearly worn my copy out.
 
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#Dusk#

New member
Nice choices 2stepfan! Am enjoying that mix as I type.

And to see you say you wished you'd included Chiapet 'Tick Tock' hurts! Now <i>that</i> was a tune, tech-house without actually being in any way, shape or form tech-house. Just the odd helicopter popping up if I remember rightly and a militant track underneath. Perfect.

Reminds me of the days when Mood II Swing, Masters At Work and Deep Dish ran house music. The odd discoey number (Jerald Daemyon-Summer Madness anyone?), a little pilly fella (maybe Mood II Swing - All Night Long) mixed with something filthy that did very little for five minutes except hurt your speakers and very possibly your spleen. Ah to be young again. Must remember to check this thread again when I can read properly.
 

low band

Well-known member
2stepfan said:
What I really wanted to put in was Moodymann's I can't quit this feeling when it hits, which I don't have, and I couldn't buy it anywhere. Wish he'd reissue that LP. That's a simply devestating record.

First off. cheers for the mix, very nice, that last track has got KB written all over it, great stuff. I Can't Kick This Feeling has been re-issued on 12" along with pretty much the rest of MM's back catalogue, an excellent track indeed (nice mixing it into the end of Chic's I Want Your Love), infact if you can get 'A Silent Introduction' on vinyl all the better. Worth checking out also is the first 3 Chairs record for some stripped down and broken Detroit house, the stuff on there by Theo Parrish and Rick Wilhite is well fucked up.

You make some good points regarding house, no matter what stuff i've got into over the years i keep going back... I remember reading about nottinghams DiY spinning house, funk and jazz in the middle of the Castle Donnington free festival whilst every other sound system played nosebleed techno gabba of some form or another, says alot to me that.
 

Backjob

Well-known member
#Dusk# said:
something filthy that did very little for five minutes except hurt your speakers and very possibly your spleen.

It's a little too late in the day for the period you're talking about, but I will never ever get sick of DJ Sneak and Armand van Helden's "Hardsteppin disco selection" A-side. Best bouncy chicago kickdrums ever. And not much else. That record actually did ruin a pair of my speakers back in teh day.

It's funny, I was wondering the other day if that old early 90s Junior Vasquez sound would ever see a revival. Some of that was pretty tense and nervous. Most of us probably fucking hated it at the time, mind.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Backjob said:
It's funny, I was wondering the other day if that old early 90s Junior Vasquez sound would ever see a revival. Some of that was pretty tense and nervous.
"Am I gonna score? Am I gonna score? AM I GONNA SCORE?"
:)
Backjob said:
Most of us probably fucking hated it at the time, mind.
Oh, I'm sure that's true!
 

mms

sometimes
no nervous acid by massive b bloke?
is your site still down paul?
i couldn't reach it yesterday.
i love house.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
mms said:
no nervous acid by massive b bloke?
is your site still down paul?
i couldn't reach it yesterday.
i love house.
No Nervous Track by MAW either :). Yeah site is still down, no pagan house for the solstice :(. (I'm making do with unreleased and amazing Black Dog tracks.) Looks like Boom Boom Bashment is very popular, downloads have maxed out my bandwidth even though it's zipped...
 
O

Omaar

Guest
2stepfan said:
...downloads have maxed out my bandwidth even though it's zipped...

Doesn't zipping mp3s not really make them any smaller as they're already super compressed? I think its only handy for grouping a bunch of mp3s together .. that's what I've heard anyway ..

ta for the mixes though - i like the 2 step one best.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Omaar said:
Doesn't zipping mp3s not really make them any smaller as they're already super compressed? I think its only handy for grouping a bunch of mp3s together .. that's what I've heard anyway ..
It's not to save space, it's to stop people playing them from their browser over and over, which just destroys your bandwidth (but is the only way a lot of people can listen to mixes when they're at work, which is a pisser).

Omaar said:
ta for the mixes though - i like the 2 step one best.
Cool, thanks for taking time to check out our stuff!
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
bassnation said:
nice stuff - great move to start the mix with a tune from my life in the bush of ghosts, an lp i've been caning in recent weeks (due in no small part to "rip it up and start again"). proto house, without which the dance scene would not be what it is.
Absolutely right, I was torn between this and something off Remain in Light but thematically it fitted so well... (I've massively increased the length of the article about the mix on the blog, which noone will be able to see til July / the D.O.G. days :().

bassnation said:
also love those stranded remixes - nice to give these tunes the space to breath rather than cramming loads of tracks on to the mix, its more how they were intended to be played.
The stranded / 777 section is probably the most proggy bit of the mix :). Actually the stranded tunes, rather than being left to develop on their own, are edited to fuck!

Did you like the robot voices? There's loads of 'em all over the mix but noone seems to have noticed them yet!
 
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